Weekend tip for families: Literaturhaus Munich celebrates Celestino Piatti

Created: 2022-01-21Updated: 2022-01-21, 5:24 p.m

By: Katja Kraft

"Everything I paint has eyes," Celestino Piatti once said.

Maybe that's why he was so taken with the owls.

© Celestino Piatti

The Swiss graphic artist Celestino Piatti would have been 100 years old this year.

The Literaturhaus Munich celebrates it this Saturday.

With an exhibition, sale of coveted originals and activities for children.

A feast for the whole family!

How is it that in the chaos of new releases in a bookstore you pick up this or that work from the display?

It's the design that counts!

So if customers bought one of the many dtv paperbacks particularly frequently in the 1960s to 1990s, then that is also due to Celestino Piatti (1922-2007), the great Swiss graphic artist who designed the covers at the time.

He would have turned 100 on January 5 of this year.

The Swiss graphic artist Celestino Piatti (1922-2007) © Keystone Kupferschmidt

Because his pictures are such a celebration, the Munich Literature House is dedicating one to Celestino Piatti this Saturday.

He was an artist - all the dtv covers (more than 6000 in number) were not created on the computer as is usual today, but in his studio.

Just like the fantastic children's books he illustrated.

Just recently, Nordsüd Verlag published

seven picture books that were created between 1963 and 1976 in one volume for the first time in “Piatti for Children”

The Literaturhaus Munich offers a colorful program

The Literaturhaus München celebrates Celestino Piatti this Saturday with a program that is as colorful as the artist's works. From 1 p.m. his daughter Barbara Piatti opens folders from her father's estate with phenomenal political advertising graphics and the most beautiful animal motifs from the 20th century. Posters, sculptures and film clips can also be seen, for example. Tours with Barbara Piatti begin every hour on the hour. A selection of special prints (signed and numbered), drawings, posters and the dtv homage edition are for sale. Inspired in this way, children can let off steam artistically at painting tables. A panel discussion will follow at 7 p.m. on why Piatti is still a bubbling source of inspiration today.

Makes you thirsty: a beer advertising poster designed by Celestino Piatti.

© Celestino Piatti

"Everything I paint has eyes," the artist himself once said.

This is also true in a figurative sense.

Because the beer glass on one of the many advertising posters that Piatti designed may be shown without a visual organ – it draws our gaze as if it were looking at us.

The liquid is golden yellow, the foam head is strong, a hint of water pearls on the glass, which makes you feel how fresh and cold the brew must be.

It goes without saying that the pink hand reaches for it purposefully.

Just the sentence: "Beer is something good".

Who wants to disagree at this sight?

Celestino Piatti was particularly taken with owls

Piatti especially loved the eyes of the owls.

One could hardly imagine a better trademark for a designer of book titles.

Feathers and eyes make Piatti's owl the ideal symbol for writing and reading.

"You can draw the owl a thousand times, you can't get at its secret," another quote from the artist.

Who, without exaggeration, has done it more than 1000 times.

And always with other means of expression.

Sometimes the majestic birds with thick black contours sit in their stoic pose, a painting style that most people associate with Piatti.

But he could also do otherwise.

There he conjures up his pictorial worlds in delicate watercolours.

And it's not just for the fish that everything flows.

Beastly beautiful.

All information and tickets are available here